Month: February 2009

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Economic Education: Mac vs. PC

Sometimes tough economic times do wake folks up a bit:

Mac Sales Growth Falls Below PCs

At U.S. retail, Windows PC unit sales were up 16.6 percent year over year in January, while Mac sales fell 5.5 percent. In October, when Apple launched snazzy, new MacBooks, Mac unit sales rose 27.2 percent compared with 5.7 percent for Windows. The major difference for the two months between: a rapidly eroding U.S. economy.

The article includes Mac apologist comments about folks fleeing “value” over the issue of “price,” but that’s a bogus argument. Sure, there are times when a luxury Mercedes is the right car for the job, but if all you’re doing is getting to work and back, trips to the grocery store, etc., then a MOR Toyota or even Saturn is just as good.

But the quality difference between a $500 PC and a $1,000 (or usually more) Mac just isn’t as big as the Macultists argue. And the PC platform is still much, much more flexible and has apps that are just as good–even sometimes better–than the Mac platform has available, no matter what phanbois may say.

Personally, I’d rather have the difference in price to spend on more software and peripherals, but that’s just me. Folks who’d rather spend more to use a Mac can still do so, and that’s fine with me too. But apparently, more buyers of computers are seeing the value in having more money in their pocket for other things at the end of their computer purchase.

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Who’d-a Thunk It?

There’s a kind of hush all over twc today. The unthinkable has occurred. A decade and more has passed since the last such “once in a blue moon” event has come to pass.

I have a doctor’s appointment.

*yawn*

Yeh, yeh, I’m too lazy and impatient (and easily bored) to manage my blood pressure consistently with (regular) exercise and slow breathing exercises, though the slow breathing exercises alone pretty reliably bring my blood pressure to within normal range. Have a mole that’s undergone a dramatic change this week. Really ought to get a PSA done. (Old–and I do mean old: a year older than I–college roomie has pressured me to do this ever since his prostate cancer, so all right already, Dave! Yeh, go figure. Roomies with the same name. We had answering the phone down pat. “Speaking.” *heh*)

Little things add up, I guess. I can put up with a knee killing me when I walk regularly. Missing sleep I can work around. All the other aches and pains of encroaching age are just background noise–kinda like my tinnitus. But my laziness and impatience are incurable, so it’s off to the doctor I go to tell ’em to gimme some pills, etc.

Putting a crimp in my day, though. *grumble, grumble, gripe, complain*

Oh, well.

Hey, maybe I can get the doc to take a look at my cat who’s losing weight at the same time, you think? 😉

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Disturbing Details in “Chimp Attack” Report

OK, so chimp goes wild, acts like a typical gangbanger (or illegal alien/Mexican drug dealer2, or “moderate” Muslim only tamer). Sad for the woman he attacked but otherwise, not all that significant.

What is really disturbing is this caption under a pic of the chimp:

A 200-pound chimpanzee named Travis attacked and critically injured a 55-year-old woman in Stamford, Conn., on Monday. This is an image of the monkey when it escaped in 2003.

Chimp=monkey? I don’t think so. Illiterate boob captioned the pic. That’s the quality of Hivemind reporting. Even when it has plain old ordinary news, it screws that up with dumbass stuff like “chimp=monkey”.

Ya just can’t make this stuff up, folks. These people are illiterate boobs, and it’s illiterate boobs like these who “inform” a vast majority of the other illiterate boobs who make up the electorate.

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“I do these silly things…

…so you don’t have to.” That may be Jerry Pournelle’s well-known comment from his days writing for Byte, but I’ve kinda adopted it here at twc.

Recent “silly things” @ twc central.

1. Lesson learned: attempting to install a peripheral/software combo intended for a Win98 environment in compatibility mode on a Win7 machine is… not recommended. That Win7 install is now well and truly FUBAR. Unbootable. Unrepairable. Dead. Toast. On the last train to its final reward. Gone. Kaput.

*heh* (“I love it when a plan comes together”)

Oh. Well. I’ll reinstall the OS later, but right now I need to screw things up on this Ubuntu intall. Now, how can I manage that….. Oh! I know!

2. Running alphas (alphas!?!) of Opera 10 on my “mission critical” Ubuntu install. Two of them. One is the Opera 10a build 4166 for Linux, and the other is Opera 10a build 1285 for Windows. Each of the builds is the latest for its OS. So, any “issues”?

Ya think?

On the Windows build, not such a biggie so far on this, my third Opera 10 alpha for Windows, build. Fired up quickly and… “*huh*?!? Can’t read the toolbars or menus! Need a microscope to see the teeny tiny print. OK, Tools>Preferences>Advanced>Fonts and change the font and font sizes. Now it’s readable. So far, that’s the only issue on this build of the Windows alpha (running under WINE). Why this “upgrade” of the previous alpha decided to change the fonts/sizes is beyond me. I’ll have to check the Desktop Team site later and see if others experienced this. Could be a regression that now has a fix.

On the Linux version. *sigh* I can reliably crash the thing by simply CLICKing in the compose field to write a post in WordPress. Every. Single. Time. That’s a non starter.

Oh, well. “I do these silly things… ” etc.

OTOH, doing something as silly as running Ubuntu 9.04 in a VM hosted on Ubuntu 8.10 hasn’t wreaked havoc on my machine. Yet. *heh* Still kinda silly, but no negative impact yet.

On the gripping hand, finally a FIrefox upgrade that didin’t force me to reinstall/reconfigure VMWare Server! Yipee! My need to join The Hairclub for Men is averted (just barely)! At least this time I’m not tearing my hair out by the roots over another Firefox/VMWare tiff. Now, if only installing VMWare’s VM Tools in an Ubuntu client would go as smoothly, but no. The open-vm-tools alternative is almost as good, but just not quite.

Oh, well. It’s a silly thing to do anyway–Ubuntu client hosted on Ubuntu. At least it’s not a Wubi install of Ubuntu on a Win2K or XP client hosted on Ubuntu… *heh* Now that was really silly.

Non-compgeeky silly: got some whole, raw milk at a Mennonite dairy near America’s Third World County (over the state line in America’s Third World State. No, not that one. The other one. ;-)) and had to freeze the stuff to get the cream to separate out. *sigh* Why separate the cream out? Silly. Want to make cottage cheese from the almost-skim that resulted. For my amusement. (And enjoyment–I like cottage cheese). Then, see how much ricotta I can make from the whey. Then make bread using what whey is left from that. (I really just wanted to hear “what whey” in my mind’s ear.) Shouldn’t take too much time away from brewing another batch of beer. I hope.

Meanwhile, enjoying real cream in my coffee. Not going to waste the stuff making butter, although I do have fond childhood memories of “churning” the butter. (Didn’t use a churn. We made such small batches, my task, when I was assigned to the butter-making chore, was simply to shake the cream in a jar until I had some butter. Mom would salt it to her taste and we’d all enjoy.)

On second thought, maybe I will make some butter.

Notice no curmudgeonly griping about politics or society in this post? That’s cos I’m weighing whether to move to Norstrilia when the U.S. sinks under a load of political B.S. Sure, Norstrilia is a fictional place, but at least it makes some sort of sense.

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“Peaceful Islam” “Moderate Muslims” (yeh, MHWA)

So, a so-called “Moderate Muslim” who founded a television station to aid in spreading the “truth” about “the religion of peace”… beheaded his wife.

Yep. Ironic, eh? His intent to practice “holy deception” (al taqiyah), that is, blowing smoke up the skirts of stupid Americans, is shot to doll rags by his own faithful practice of Islamic traditions. So beheading is a tad messier than stoning. It’s still well within the traditions. After all, women–within Islamic tradition, closely following the life and work of Islam’s founder–aren’t really humans, just chattel.

And his wife–as countless others before her–discovered just how effective a “protective order” designed to keep him away from her could be. Yep. Worked just as well as “cease fire” agreements with Palestinian thugs works for Israel, that is to say, not at all. I just wonder how it might have turned out had she gotten a handgun, learned how to use it and had a carry permit, instead of relying on a piece of paper to shield her from a Muslim man intent on faithfully emulating the life and following the teachings of the Butcher of Medina…

(Do I have to “h.t.” Drudge? *heh*)

Trackposted to Nuke’s, The Virtuous Republic, The Pink Flamingo, , and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Would you believe…

(said in my best Don Adams/Get Smart voice)… 15 minutes to set up an OS? Less, actually.

New VM: Ubuntu 9.04 alpha. Yeh, not even beta. Alpha. The finished product is due out in April, but I had to get a foretaste, so…

Ubuntu 8.10 host.

VMWare Server 2.

Ubuntu 9.04 client (VM).

After designating the hardware setup for the new client OS, less than 15 minutes to a working desktop. About what it took me for my last physical install of PCBSD.

Nice.

Of course, it might have taken a tad longer had it had to actually sniff out my real hardware configs, but still.

Unfortunately, even though I chose the “alternate” (text) install process, the promised ext4 file system wasn’t an option, and it won’t appear as a default choice until 9.10 (in October 09).

Oh, well. Ext3 is still not bad at all, at all.

…

Later…

Well, so far, I don’t see a lot of difference from 8.10, but I suppose the differences will become apparent… or I’ll look up the changelog later. 😉

Works fine. Had 350+ “updates” waiting when desktop first booted but would not install all of them unless I first performed an “upgrade” using a subset of the waiting updates. No biggie. Just went on with other things in the host system. We’ll just have to see how things go.

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Betaware: MS’s HDView

More betaware from Microsoft, and I guess this is kind of cool, but something I simply cannot foresee as having any use for me. Photography buffs may see it differently.

HDView

HD View is a new viewer developed by Microsoft Research’s Interactive Visual Media group to aid in the display and interaction with very large images.

View some panoramas. There’s even a link to stitch some of your own together (stitching is visible, more or less). Funny thing: the MS website complained about my browser (Opera) and stated categorically that the HDView plugin would NOT work with it, that it was only compatible with some less-advanced browsers like Internet Exploder and Firefox. *heh*

Wrong. Stupid browser sniffer. I just told Opera to mask itself as Firefox in the “site preferences” tab and–bingo! The plugin downloaded, installed and all was well.

Stupid browser sniffer.

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Wal-Mart+Microsoft=Juggernaut of Doom?

Or a really interesting development?

Who knows?

The guy who will start–tomorrow!–as “Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores” for Microsoft spent 25 years in Wal-Mart management, the last big bunch in upper levels. Is this a signal that Me$$y$oft is getting serious about retail sales or will this be a cross between Microsoft Bob and low-end WallyWorld?

Again, who know? But it will be instructive to watch as this unfolds.

“There are tremendous opportunities ahead for Microsoft to create a world-class shopping experience for our customers,” Porter [the former Wal-Mart guy] said. “I am excited about helping consumers make more informed decisions about their PC and software purchases, and we’ll share learnings from our stores with our existing retail and OEM partners that are critical to our success.”

*huh* “[M]ore informed choices”=”brainwash with hogwash”? Maybe, maybe not. Too soon to tell. If a Me$$y$oft store opens up within driving distance of America’s Third World County, I’ll report back in on my experience “shopping” in one (“shopping” because I’ll likely not be buying)

Anywho, Welcome, David Porter, to the wonderful world of Me$$y$oft retail!

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Win7/Ubuntu: Dual Boot Vs. VM

OK, dual booting just sucks swamp water. After just a few months of using VMs instead of dual booting, I had forgotten just how sucky dual booting really is.

Not for me, thank you.

Tried installing Ubuntu 8.10 with Wubi, but no joy. Installed just fine, apparently (or so it reported) but canNOT get it to show in the boot menu. Weird. Tried editing it manually and… no boot.

Well, Wubi installs Ubuntu in a different kind of dual/multi-boot, but it’s still, “Shut down current OS and reboot into different one” so not really all that useful.

Installing VMWare Server is easier in Win7 than in Ubuntu, but configuring VMWare Server and installing guest OSes is not. *sigh* But at least it works and doesn’t require stopping one OS to fire up another.

Now, installing VMWare Tools in the Ubuntu guest? Lots and LOTS of command line foo-foo. Oh. Well. At least it’s relatively easy command line foo-foo, just lotsa typing and retyping (cos my typing “skills”–such as they are… not–leads to lotsa typos and re-typing… and loads of pressing “Enter” to just go ahead and accept default configurations *heh*).

Oops. VMWare Tools doesn’t like the Ubuntu guest’s default location for the C headers, won’t accept it (even though version.h et al are all there). Oh. Well. Installing Open VM Tools instead. Automagic installation w/no command line foo-foo. Better for my typo-laden “Biblical typing method” (“seek and ye shall find” *heh*). VMWare needs to look into the Open VM Tools implementation.

Not bad, now. Ubuntu runs nicely, even screen configs, etc., w/o adding special, e.g. made-for-my-vidcard, drivers. With access to the external drive where my data from the Ubuntu drive is backed up, I’m pretty well set. Unfortunately, since the VM is bridging my hardware, it’s not an entirely fair comparison (no “update Ubuntu, reconfigure sound/video” issues, for example), but general usability should be pretty easy to compare. I’ll say this much just so far: when I switched to Ubuntu it was much easier finding ways to do quite a bit of the customizing I like to do with my machines than it has been with my toe-dipping in Vista machines or now in this Win7 Beta. I guess it’s a philosophy of “Hide things from users so they can’t easily break them,” but that annoys the s(p)it out of me. *heh*